Jang Sung-taek

Jang Sung-taek (January 1946-12 December 2013) was the Vice Chairman of the National Defense Commission of North Korea, Chairman of the State Physical Culture and Sports Guidance Commission of the Workers' Party, and Chief of the Central Administrative Department of the Workers' Party under his nephew Kim Jong-un.

Biography
Jang Sung-taek was born in January 1946 in North Hamgyong Province, Soviet Korea. From 1968 to 1972 he studied at Moscow State University in the Soviet Union, and he married Kim Jong-il's sister Kim Kyong-hui on his return to North Korea. Their daughter Jang Kum-song was born in 1977, and in 2006 she would attendan international school in Paris and refuse to come home; she committed suicide when her parents disapproved of her boyfriend. From the 1970s onwards he had a series of Workers' Party of Korea titles, but in the late 1970s he was demoted to be a steel and ironworks manager in Nampo and other factories after he had an elegant lifestyle and was becoming too powerful. In 1986 he was elected to the Supreme People's Assembly, and in April 1989 he became a People's Hero. When Kim Il-sung died in 1994, he was a funeral committee member, and until 25 November 2004 he was considered as a possible successor to Kim Jong-il, the new Supreme Leader of North Korea.

In March 2006 he accompanied his brother-in-law on a visit to China and became the overseer of police and internal security as Vice-Director of the Workers' Party of Korea under his brother-in-law. He was a close ally of him, and he was one of the bearers of his coffin at his funeral in 2011. He did not get along well with his nephew Kim Jong-un, the new Supreme Leader, who wanted to erase all traces of his father's rule over the country and ensure that the leaders of North Korea were loyal only to him. On 12 December 2013 he was arrested after being accused of insulting Kim Jong-un, and Kim Jong-un had his brother Kim Jong-chul arrest Jang Sung-taek after many others refused to do so. He was executed by anti-aircraft guns in Pyongyang along with many family members, and images of him were edited out of official photographs.